George Allwell and Marcus J. Mitchell blog about all things sport related, any comments or suggestions e-mail: sportscastfour@gmail.com

Archive for April, 2012

This will be the first post on this website for over a year, we didn’t stop caring about sport, or even stop writing about sport, we just stopped using this site as our tool to do so. However these days I find myself in a place where I want to just say exactly what I feel without prejudice, without censorship and without remorse.

I am a Liverpool fan, and as explained many-a-time I am also a southerner, I was persuaded into being a fan by a cheeky Liverpudlian brickie working on my parents pub about a month before the European cup final against Roma in ’84, meaning I have been a fan for 28 of my 33 years. I am very proud to be a fan and am always critical when things are going bad (Souness’ spell in charge, Houllier’s bizarre hate for God (Robbie Fowler to the uneducated) and anything to do with Hicks and Gillett to name a few).

In December 2010 I wrote an article on this site praying for the end of Roy Hodgson as manager, after his tumultuous reign as the main man at Anfield, his negative counter attacking tactics worked wonders against Chelsea but made us vulnerable* against Blackpool twice, Wolves and Wigan to name a few. I NEVER thought that I would be writing the same article about Kenny, but here I am, doing it anyway.

*for vulnerable read rubbish.

Before I get bombarded with abuse please let me explain, when Kenny was put in charge after Woy left I was ecstatic, he was the perfect pick me up after such a dull run, and boy did it work, he injected life into the club, he risked youngsters who gave everything and never looked out of place, even Torres banged in a couple of goals, then it happened…. no, I’m not talking about buying Carroll, or selling Torres, or Gerrards long term injury. No, what happened was far, far worse, Kenny was given (click this link as you read the last line for full effect) a 3 year contract!!

Yes he is a legend ( a word banded about far too much, Bale is not a legend, neither is Tony Hibbert, nor Kevin Davies for that matter), and short of the reincarnation of Shankly I can think of no better person to steady said sinking ship, but just temporarily. We are after all talking about a man whose last real job in management was a very mediocre year at Newcastle when he manged to take them to the heady heights of 13th place in 1998 before being sacked (I am discounting his caretaker stint at Celtic, which I’m sure most Celtic fans are aswell) so he hardly comes back with a wealth of recent success.

Instead we give him a 3 year deal and carte blanche in the transfer market with a hundred million quid, I won’t start on the transfers because regardless of performance they are all class(ish) players, just not a class team.

It’s what Kenny does with them that I hate, take Henderson for example, an England cap to his name at the age of 20, suitors of the likes of both Manchester clubs and Chelsea, we strike while the iron is hot and we get our man, a 20 year old International midfielder with bags of qualities and heaps of potential, so surely he is nailed on for a Euro 2012 place you ask? No, instead he is pushed from pillar to post, centre mid, wide right, wide left, in the hole (they are all football terms, trust me), the reason he was rated so highly at Sunderland is because he nailed down a position and made it his own, at Liverpool he has been chastised by fans for underperforming, ARE YOU INSANE? it’s not his fault if he is one position one week, a different position the next week and on the bench the week after.

This goes for all the team, other than Reina, Enrique, Gerrard and Suarez, nobody knows when or where they will be playing from one game to the next, Rafa Benitez famously went 100+ games without naming the same side once but he only ever changed one, maybe two players at a time, Kenny changes 4 or 5 a game for no other reason than he can, confidence levels in the club must be knee high at the moment, either show some form of consistency or even finishing 8th is a pipe dream.

We should start now, not the end of the month, not the end of the season, now, in searching for a new manager, maybe Mourinho is out of reach, but lets find the best there is, make him an offer he cannot refuse (instead of another £20m squad player) and nail him down for next year so we can realistically look at challenging for the title sometime this decade.

The thing that bothers me more than Liverpool’s recent failings is this, I am a MASSIVE football fan, I put massive in capitals to emphasise just how massive a fan I am, I love watching football, whether it is a Premier League game, or a Blue Square Premier League game, I just love watching football, but since we’ve been playing so badly, and records of how bad we are doing are being broken weekly, I find myself less and less interested in watching, I haven’t watched Match Of The Day for 3 weeks now and I put the blame solely at the feet of Kenny Dalglish, I love the man, and will always love the man for what he has done for the club, but for me, the best thing he can do for the club at the end of the season……